In recent years, high-speed railway is developing rapidly, and a high-speed train obtains electrical energy from a catenary via a sliding contact between a catenary wire and a pantograph pan. However, with acceleration of the train, coupled vibration is aggravated while the catenary and a pantograph are contacting with each other, heavily deteriorating a status of electrical contact between the pantograph and the catenary and resulting in frequent occurrences of disconnections of a pantograph-catenary (the pantograph and the catenary). And pantograph-catenary electric arcs generated during occurrence of the disconnections severely burn the catenary wire and the pantograph pan, posing a huge threat to safe operating of the high-speed train, which has become a technical bottleneck constraining further development of the high-speed railway of China. Hence, systematical and deep researches on features of the pantograph-catenary electric arc are required urgently. In a real running high-speed train, due to limitations such as practical conditions and device installation space, there is a great difficulty in detecting performance parameters of the pantograph-catenary electric arc in the field. In conventional technology, a simulation testing system is employed to research features of the pantograph-catenary electric arc. In a simulation test of detecting the pantograph-catenary electric arc, how to provide a case of a high voltage and a great current is the key to a test on the pantograph-catenary electric arc.
It should be noted herein that currently, conventional methods for performing a test on a pantograph-catenary electric arc have the following disadvantages. First, in a case that a conventional high-voltage and great-current power supply is employed, a power supply with a power of several megawatts is needed, and megawatts of power is frequently inputted and cut off at an electric network side as needed by the test, which easily causes instability of a power supply system. Second, in a case that a solution of a low voltage and a great current power supply or a solution of a high voltage and a small current power supply is employed, there is a difference between the simulation test and a practical operating condition that there is a high voltage and a great current in a gap between the pantograph and the catenary. Third, in a solution of storing energy in a capacitor and performing the test on the pantograph-catenary electric arc by discharging through an inductor, the generated voltage and current attenuate rapidly and exponentially because a resistance of a discharging circuit is hard to reduce, failing to meet requirements of the test on the pantograph-catenary electric arc.
Currently, there is no effective solution to solve the technical problem that energy consumption is high due to power supplying with a high voltage alternating current voltage source for generation of a high voltage and a great current in a gap between a pantograph and a catenary in the methods for performing a simulation test on a pantograph-catenary electric arc according to conventional technology.